What The Elites Do: Marathon Warm-Up

Less is more for optimal performance.

The old adage that "less is more" certainly holds true when it comes to warming up for a marathon. "Really, you want to do as little as you can stand while still being warmed up," says Brad Hudson, a Boulder-based elite coach. "Even a mile or a mile and a half is more than enough for most people."

The relatively slow opening pace and longer distance of the marathon provide ample opportunity for athletes to ease into a race without sacrificing their overall time goal. It also saves them from needing a longer warm-up, which would force them to dip into their vital glycogen stores. Simple as that sounds on paper, the truncated warm-up often catches new marathoners off guard.

"It's kind of funny, because I didn't have any idea how to warm up for the marathon because it was my first one," says Colorado Springs' Alisha Williams, 30, who debuted with a 14th-place finish at the Olympic trials marathon. "I thought we'd just do the normal warm-up: 20 minutes, some strides, and all that good stuff. But right before the race, coach [Scott Simmons] said, 'Just do a mile as slow as you can.' It was very interesting. In the marathon you have to warm up as you go."

Williams was fortunate--a tactically slow opening mile at the trials allowed that to happen naturally. Other runners prefer to hit their goal pace immediately. For this reason, coaches like Hudson often keep all the elements of a regular warm-up in place. The tradeoff comes in terms of duration. "I have some athletes that, no matter what, have to run 20 minutes easy before anything they do," he says. "Those are the exception. For most of them, I have them do a half warm-up: a 10-minute run with half the drills and a couple of strides."

Elite runners cite another advantage to being less warmed up before the gun goes off: emotional restraint. "I want to make sure that I'm just a little tight going into the start line," says 29-year-old Pat Rizzo of Boulder, noting that doing so helps him "avoid letting the crowd get [him] too riled up."

That said, a warm-up also serves as a pre-race rite that helps steady the marathoner's mental and emotional states. Having a consistent, tried-and-true routine can help ease pre-race anxieties. It also explains why some athletes can give you obsessive detail about their warm-up.

"I usually woke up about four hours before the race start and ate a small, simple meal almost right away," says 2004 Olympic marathoner Alan Culpepper. "I would continue to hydrate over the course of the four hours leading up to the race and eat another small amount, usually an energy bar, about one and a half hours before the race. I usually only did a short 10-minute warm-up jog starting about 40 minutes prior to the race. Post warm-up I would do my usual light stretching routine, followed by four or five 100-meter strides 10 minutes prior to the race starting. I had my pre-race ritual down well."